The present invention relates to electric razors or shavers, primarily rotating ones, which are designed to prevent hair shavings from flying outside of the shaver and from building up on the internal parts.
In conventional shavers, an inner blade is urged against an outer blade or screen. The outer blade has hair guiding apertures through it, into which hair can extend. An inner blade is urged against the inside surface of the outer blade and moves relative to the outer blade to shear hair along the edges of the apertures of the outer blade.
Although the following discussion relates primarily to rotary electric shavers such as the shaver shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,828,430 (1974) in which the inner blades rotate against and with respect to the outer blade, at least some aspects of the present invention have applicability to other types of electric shaver movements.
One problem in rotary electric shavers occurs with the severed hair. In certain prior art devices, the shavings tend to fly out of the hair guiding holes and to create an unclean and messy condition around the user. Filters are used to trap hair when the air flow is exhausted, but these filters need cleaning. See for example U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,571,926 (1971) and 2,376,197 (1945). Another problem occurs in the shaver because the severed hair collects on the supporting member for the inner blade. This hair eventually clogs the shaver, and hair adjacent the inner blade interferes with the contact between the inner and outer blades leading to a more rapid deterioration of the cutting edge of the inner blade. Thus, hair must be removed from between the inner blade supporting member and the outer blade, but the removal must be controlled so that severed hair will not be expelled from the shaver.
Previous shavers had extremely complex designs to alleviate the hair removal problem. For example, the previously mentioned U.S. Pat. No. 3,828,430 has numerous complex parts requiring intricate fabrication and assembly. Moreover, when cleaning inside the shaver is necessary, extra parts may easily be lost or damaged.
If air generated by blade rotation blows and directs the shavings off the inner blade support to a receptacle, problems still arise. If the flow of air is too powerful or is in the wrong direction, shavings may not be collected, and some that are collected below the inner blade support in a receptacle may be blown around the housing of the shaver back up to the area above the inner blade or out through the apertures in the outer blade screen. Hair being directed off the inner blade support may adhere to portions of the inner blade support unless air flow and centrifugal force properly removes hair from these portions.
If much hair is directed outward and a large centrifugal air flow is created, the hair will have a tendency to fly outward and to be ejected through the outer blade. If air is directed downward through the inner blade support and out between the outer edge of the inner blade support and the inside of the outer blade support then through openings in the periphery of the outer blade, hair that is carried by any centrifugal air flow beyond the outer edge of the inner blade support will be blown by the air flow emerging from below the inner blade support through the outer blade.
With this background in mind, the following are objects of the present invention:
To disclose and provide a rotary electric shaver that prevents hair shavings from flying outside of the shaver or from adhering to the shaver's inner blade support;
To disclose and provide an electric shaver in which the shavings are collected in a receptacle below the inner blade support;
To disclose and provide an electric shaver that efficiently directs air through openings in the inner blade support to direct hair toward the receptacle, but which limis the velocity of air flowing over the shaving accumulated in the receptacle to prevent such shavings from being driven by the flow of air out of the receptacle;
To disclose and provide a configuration for the parts of the apparatus that cooperate to help prevent the shavings from moving out of the receptacle under the influence of the flow of air;
To disclose and provide a construction that limits centrifugal air flow above the inner blade support below the outer blade;
To disclose and provide a device of relatively simple construction and assembly that can be taken apart easily for cleaning and reassembly without the risk of losing or damaging parts; and
To disclose and provide a method of delivering shavings to a receptacle and retaining them therein.
The present invention meets the foregoing objects and other objects that may become evident in this specification.